PSYCHOMACHIA IN ART FROM PRUDENTIUS TO PROUST

FROM THE early days of Christianity the life of the Christian has been seen as spiritual warfare against external and internal enemies. Christian asceticism, the discipline of the internal life of the Christian, has employed the allegory of warfare to stimulate imagination and obedience Prudentius, the late Latin poet and hymn-writer, gave the title 'Psychomachia', ' spiritual warfare, to a poem which much influenced mediaeval poetry and art and which can be shown to have echoes in more recent literature. Emile Male's L'Art rehgieux du XIIF siecle en France * is a convenient guide to Prudentius for it traces the literary and pictorial development of the psychomachia from Prudentius to the great cathedrals of mediaeval France. In Book III, 'The Mirror of Morals', Male notes that the order—nature, know-ledge, virtue—in the Speculum majus ' is that of Pascal's three worlds, the world of material things, the world of mind and the world of love.4 The idea of an inner battle is a fundamental one in Christianity. 'Psychomachia ' recounts th